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When Robert J. Beall joined the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation in 1980, he launched a program aimed at absorbing the early financial risk involved in drug development as a way to entice for-profit companies to get involved in cystic fibrosis research. That strategy was vindicated with the approval in January of the first small-molecule drug that directly interacts with the mutated protein responsible for cystic fibrosis. Elie Dolgin spoke with Beall to learn more about his organization’s pioneering approach to venture philanthropy.

Albumin selectively inhibits Mucorales growth through the release of bound free fatty acids.

Elected to make America healthy again, the actions of the Trump administration have undermined health globally.

A thin liquid coating on a fibre can break up into droplets due to the Plateau–Rayleigh instability, as for instance on a spider web. Here, Haefner et al. show that the growth rate of the droplet undulations strongly depends on the fibre–liquid boundary condition and slip accelerates the instability.

Genetic modification could enable industrial-scale production of cannabinoids that have pharmaceutical potential.

Typical quantum error correcting codes assign fixed roles to the underlying physical qubits. Now the performance benefits of alternative, dynamic error correction schemes have been demonstrated on a superconducting quantum processor.

Co-working spaces in which many entrepreneurs share a common environment have been a hallmark of the computer startup industry for decades. Now, the life sciences sector is beginning to do the same. Elie Dolgin talks with the pioneers helping to bring affordable wet-lab space—plus the infrastructure and support needed to launch a successful commercial enterprise—to the next generation of biotech innovators.

A tour through the most studied genes in biology reveals some surprises.

The Department of Defense is continuing to bankroll projects to develop vaccines against deadly pathogens.

Drug makers are scrambling to navigate an ‘existential threat’ to a once-celebrated technology.

Patients have long received cancer treatments at the maximum tolerated dose on a regular schedule. Could a more sophisticated approach save lives? Elie Dolgin meets one mathematical biologist whose theories are now being tested in the clinic to see if they can improve the efficacy of today's anticancer arsenal.

Insulin-producing islet cells could hold the secret to curing type 1 diabetes—if only scientists could figure out a way to encapsulate and transplant them into the body. But first, the right biocompatible material must be found to hold these precious cells. A team of bioengineers thinks it has discovered one. Elie Dolgin reports.

Hundreds of scientists had worked on mRNA vaccines for decades before the coronavirus pandemic brought a breakthrough.

More than a decade after Japanese scientists implanted the first bioengineered blood vessel into a child with a congenital heart defect, the experimental treatment has finally made its way into clinical testing in the US. Elie Dolgin asks what took so long and what lessons have been learned along the way.

Experimental measurements of high-order out-of-time-order correlators on a superconducting quantum processor show that these correlators remain highly sensitive to the quantum many-body dynamics in quantum computers at long timescales.

Combining single-cell RNA-sequencing with high-resolution multiplexed error-robust fluorescence in situ hybridization reveals in detail the cellular interactions and specialization of cardiac cell types that form and remodel the human heart.

Cells contain an ocean of twisting and turning RNA molecules. Now researchers are working out the structures — and how important they could be.

Circulating biomarkers are quickly becoming a crucial part of diagnosis and disease monitoring for physicians, researchers — and even some consumers.

In recent years, Salmonella has tainted foods including spinach, peanut butter and eggs, sickening thousands of people in the process. But researchers hope that these microbes will make headlines for a better reason: curing cancer. They want to harness Salmonella's special ability to thrive in oxygen-deprived conditions to target regions of solid tumors that are normally immune to conventional therapies. Elie Dolgin reports.

Researchers shift focus to catch secondary tumours.

Method identifies drugs that target the cells behind cancer growth.

Industrial whaling drove several species to near extinction. From an analysis of 50 whole-genomes from fin whale populations, this study shows that the fin whale population in the Eastern North Pacific was reduced 99% during whaling but has maintained genomic diversity, whereas the Gulf of California population remained small and isolated, resulting in increased genetic load.

Analyses of samples from patients with acute myeloid leukaemia reveal that drug response is associated with mutational status and gene expression; the generated dataset provides a basis for future clinical and functional studies of this disease.

Recycling leftover chemicals and equipment slashes energy bills and boosts research budgets.

Animal experiments have produced an explosion of information about pain, but this knowledge has failed to yield new painkillers for use in humans. This abysmal track record has led to calls to overhaul the design of preclinical studies. Elie Dolgin goes to great pains to learn how monitoring rodents' facial expressions and brain activity might offer a more effective and humane way to test drug candidates.

Thymic epithelial tumors are associated with increased risk of immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI)-induced myotoxicities, and the presence of anti-acetylcholine-receptor antibodies has the potential to serve as a biomarker for ICI-induced myocarditis in patients with cancer.

Ever since Edward Jenner discovered the smallpox vaccine two centuries ago, immunization efforts have almost exclusively focused on activating the immune system. But when it comes to multiple sclerosis and other autoimmune disorders, researchers hope to switch off—rather than ramp up—the body's defenses. Even an automotive service mogul has taken the idea on board. Elie Dolgin investigates how the idea of vaccination is being turned on its head.

Everyone from rock stars to nonagenarians experiences hearing loss, but no drugs have ever been approved specifically to prevent or treat this problem. Recently, a handful of drug companies have started to make some noise, with a number of experimental compounds now in human trials. Elie Dolgin sounds off on what could be a multibillion dollar market.

The genetic basis of atopic dermatitis is not fully understood. Here, the authors find 91 genetic loci associated with atopic dermatitis in a GWAS of >1million individuals, which highlight the importance of systemic immune regulation.

Cell therapy could cure type 1 diabetes — if only the immune system didn't get in the way.

Rogue antibodies are drawn to the protein–RNA coating on half of the X chromosomes in an XX cell.

By studying individuals along a spectrum of cardiometabolic disease and adjusting for effects of lifestyle and medication, this investigation identifies alterations of the metabolome and microbiome from dysmetabolic conditions, such as obesity and type 2 diabetes, to ischemic heart disease.

An analysis of 2,173 individuals from the MetaCardis cohort quantifies the individual and combinatorial effects of a range of drugs on host health, metabolome and gut microbiome in cardiometabolic disease.

Tiny molecules called microRNAs are tearing apart traditional ideas about the animal family tree.

Schizophrenia debilitates not just by psychosis but by depriving people of the ability to feel pleasure.

More than a decade ago, scientists started finding peculiar droplets inside cells. Now researchers are trying to work out how these ubiquitous beads form and what they do.

The loss of the sense of smell has been a hallmark symptom of COVID-19. The mechanisms behind SARS-CoV-2’s ability to interfere with this sense — as well as why variants such as Omicron do so less frequently — are becoming clearer.

A randomized trial in patients hospitalized with COVID-19 showed no benefit and potentially increased harm associated with the use of convalescent plasma, with subgroup analyses suggesting that the antibody profile in donor plasma is critical in determining clinical outcomes.

Despite dire warnings, a stockpile of ready compounds to fight viral pandemics was sorely lacking. Can drugmakers finally do the right thing?

The triangle causal structure represents a departure from the usual Bell scenario, as it should allow to violate classical predictions without the need for external inputs setting the measurement bases. Here the authors realise this scenario using a photonic setup with three independent photon sources.

Destici, Zhu, et al. identify human-specific cis-regulatory elements (CREs) through a comparative epigenomic analysis of human and mouse cardiomyocytes at early stage of development and show that these CREs could contribute to species-specific cardiac features. Human-specific enhancers were particularly enriched in SNPs associated with human-specific traits (such as increased heart resting rate, atrial fibrillation and QRS duration), and the acquisition of human-specific enhancers could expand the functionality of the conserved transcriptional regulator ZIC3 by modifying its spatio-temporal expression.

Three things are needed to turn the tide on the costliest crisis in health care.